Network service chains are sequences of actions or service functions that are applied to packets of traffic as the packets pass through physical and/or virtual network elements. The service functions may be arranged according to pre-defined policies and then deployed using automated processes. A network service header is added to the packets of a data stream and describes a sequence of service nodes that the packet must be routed to prior to reaching the destination address. The network service header may also include metadata information about the packet and/or the service chain.
Entities in a cloud computing environment include cloud providers, cloud services supported by the cloud providers, and tenants or consumers that use the cloud services. While multi-tenancy (i.e., offering of services across many tenants within a cloud provider) is an important aspect of cloud computing, conventional techniques to identify the cloud computing entities do not allow classification and isolation on a per-cloud, per-service, and per-tenant basis at the network layer.